


Accidentally on Purpose

by Sedaris



Category: Supernatural
Genre: All Human AU, Hunter AU, M/M, One Shot, Romantic Tension, URT, UST, hunter cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 09:10:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sedaris/pseuds/Sedaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While working cases, the Winchesters keep running into another hunter, Cas. No matter how much Dean wants to deny it, the sparks between him and the youngest Novak are flying. </p>
<p>It kind of sucks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidentally on Purpose

_Fucking vamps_ , Dean thought, as a thick string of bloody saliva dripped slow and syrupy from the mouth of the vampire currently pinning him to the ground. He wrinkled up his face in disgust as the loogie narrowly missed his eye, splattering across his dirt-smeared cheek. Chancing a glance to the side, he could see his blade, just a few inches out of reach — and really, wasn't that always where anything useful ended up? — and his splayed fingers stretched for it futilely. 

If he could only manage roll the vampire over, he could easily get the machete and slice clear across the jugular, pressing hard and quick once he reached the thick spinal cord. Unfortunately, the monster had apparently been a pretty big fan of the gym when he was a human, and his hulking muscles were hardly flexing with the effort to keep Dean down. He had one hand on the vampire's massive neck, keeping his head at bay, but his arm was starting to give, and piranha-esque teeth were slowly approaching his neck, _and_ _where the FUCK was Sammy_ — 

The vampire's head was sliced clean off by the sudden, heavy swing of an axe. Sighing in relief, Dean pushed the mutilated corpse off of himself, turning his face to avoid the gushing spray of dark blood. "About fucking time, Sammy. The others are probably on their way right now —" he looked up at the axe-swinger to find a man that was decidedly not Sam, but was instead a shorter (though that's not to say short — everyone was shorter than Sam), tanner man, with mussed-up hair and a decent five o'clock shadow. 

"Oh, hey, it's you." Dean said, picking his blade up off the floor and moving to stand. "You" was Castiel Novak of the Illinois Novaks, a hunting family that, like Bobby, had chosen to stay stationary, taking local cases only.

Which made it a pretty fucking big surprise that Cas was here, in East Jesus Nebraska.

Dean self-consciously wiped the glob of vampire spit from his cheek. 

"Not that it isn't great to see you, man, but what the hell are you doing all the way out — duck!" Cas hit the floor, and Dean took the head off the vampire that'd snuck up behind him, sending the severed extremity flying. From his place on the ground, Cas saw another vampire running towards Dean's left, teeth bared. He sliced the monster's shins, and when the beast fell to the ground howling, Cas straddled it and drove his axe into its neck. 

All-in-all, there were about six vamps in the nest, and Dean and Cas managed to take them all out quickly enough. Dean earned a cut across his ring finger, though it was nothing deep enough for stitches. When the last head was severed, Dean turned to his partner in slaying, his breathing slowing back to normal.  "We have to stop meeting like this." He said, smiling playfully. Cas looked up from the gore-and-gut-covered floor, piercing Dean with the Baby Blues that made his stomach flip every damn time.

"Would you like to suggest somewhere else to meet?" Cas asked, and _holy SHIT, did Cas just insinuate that he'd be down for a DATE_ — 

At that moment, Sam burst through the doors of the barn, sword in hand. "Dean! Are you alright, I'm so sorry I didn't get here sooner, I just found your note, why on Earth would you leave by yourself in the middle of the night? I — oh." He said, noticing Castiel. 

"Hello, Sam. It's alright, we took care of it." Cas started wiping the edge of his axe on the hem of his wrinkled flannel shirt.

"We – you did." Sam looked over at Dean, who shrugged in return. "Well, it's...good to see you. I didn't know you were in town." 

Cas glanced up from his weapon-polishing. "This nest attacked a few families in Illinois. They moved out a few days ago, and I...decided to follow them. I didn't know you'd be here, either." That last part was just the tiniest, slightest bit rushed, defensive. His eyes went back to the floor. "What a godawful mess." He sighed.

Sam and Dean looked at eachother again. "You've done more than enough if you wanna head home now, Cas, Dean and I can take cleanup duty —" 

Cas's phone started ringing, and he scowled at the number, rejecting the call and pocketing the bulky Nokia. "My sister," he explained to the brothers' twin curious expressions. "She'll want to know where I am."

"And you, ah," Dean toed a gruesome head with his shoe, dumping salt over it. "You don't wanna tell her?"

Cas shook his head. "She knows. Gabriel definitely told her. She just wants to know for sure, so that she has concrete information to yell at me about. Having just killed six vampires, I'm not really in the mood at the moment."

The phone immediately started up again, and Cas rolled his eyes, about to just turn the damn thing off. 

"Why don't you just take it?" Dean said, big sibling instincts overriding his high school girl emotions for Cas. "I know you, and you're not gonna wanna deal with it later, either. And it'll only be worse if you wait." _And if Sammy up and crossed state borders without telling me, I'd be pretty damn worried, too_ , he thought, but didn't say.

Cas stared at his phone, whose rings seemed to get more and more menacing with each passing second. "...Fine." Cas turned and walked out of the barn, pressing the green "Accept Call" button on his cell. As he left, Dean saw him hold the phone at arm's length, Naomi's concerned shrieks pouring through the receiver.

The barn doors closed with a thud. "So...didn't expect to run into Cas." Sam was proud of himself for keeping his voice as level he did, not betraying the hope that bubbled in his chest.

"Nope." Dean shoved a box of salt into his hands. "Now shut up and get to salting."

Dean avoided talking to Sam about Cas like some kind of emotional plague. They'd met the man almost a year ago, during a hunt in Pontiac, when he and his sister Anna had saved their asses from a pack of werewolves that turned out to be a lot bigger than they'd been anticipating. They kept running into him on various hunts in the region, and Dean was...interested, to say the least.

To say the most, he had a big, fat, all-consuming crush on the guy, so much so that he'd actually taken up research duty for a while in attempt find cases near the Novak residence.  Sam didn't like it at first, for fear that the family would start to feel territorial, like the Winchesters were encroaching on their area. But after observing the pair a little on their "chance" encounters, he saw...well, sparks, he guessed, flying all over the damn place. Personal space was invaded, flirtatious comments were thrown (though only when Dean thought that he was out of earshot), eye contact was held for longer than was strictly necessary...Sam didn't have to be a college student to pick up on the hints. It was pathetic and sad, not least of all because he knew that Dean desperately wanted to keep the less-than-straight side of himself far away from Sam. It made him vulnerable, and no matter how much encouragement Sam tried to subtly deliver over the years, he knew that Dean was probably never going to be okay with vulnerability. 

He also knew that Dean's little crush was probably never going to go any further than this, and that kind of bummed him out. It wasn't often that Dean got to form real, solid relationships with people, and Cas would be a good match for him. He's definitely done worse. 

When the bodies were all salted, they made their way outside, Dean pulling a little matchbook from his pocket. "Peace out, you bloodsucking assholes." He struck the match and dropped it to the ground, watching as the flames that would eventually engulf the entire barn rose to life. Cas had already dragged a bag of sand around the perimeter, so that the fire wouldn't spread. He was leaning up against his horrible gold car — the Pimpmobile, as Dean had crassly nicknamed it — watching the action. The orange glow softly lit his face, and damn, Dean had it bad, because he was actually _blushing_ over how beautiful his sometimes-friend, sometimes-partner-in-monster-killing looked. 

Sam cleared his throat. "I'm gonna go call Balthazar, tell him that Cas is here, and that the hunt went okay."

Dean looked up at him, surprised. "Naomi probably told him already."

Sam shook his head. "I don't know. Garth told me that he showed up to crash at his place last week. Naomi kicked him out after one of his parties got too out of control, drew some cops to the house. You know how paranoid she can get. I don't think he's back home yet. Plus, he's closer to Cas than anyone. He'll want to know."

Dean nodded, watching Sam as he walked to the edge of the woods, phone in hand. Cas was still at his trashy car, looking like a poor, filthy, Midwestern, flannel-clad dreamboat. Dean sighed, making his way over to him. He leaned next to him, their hips pressed together, heat from the fire licking their bodies. "So..." he started, rubbing the back of his neck, "About meeting up somewhere else..."

Cas coughed a little. "I may have lied a bit, before. About not knowing that you two were in Nebraska. It might have...influenced my decision to follow the vampires." 

Dean's blush was at maximum capacity. He swallowed thickly. "Did it?"

Cas put on an expression that Dean had come to recognize as his brave face, having seen it emerge when fighting wendigoes and witches and various other bump-in-the-night creatures. "Yes. I like it when we run into each other on hunts. It's been less accidental, lately. I find it...exciting." He dipped his chin shyly, and Dean's heart almost flung itself out of his ribcage. "I can stay in Nebraska another night or two. I have a room. You can tell Sam that we're checking to see that this nest didn't turn anyone."

Cas was the frankest man that Dean had ever met, and it drove him absolutely wild. All of his blood was currently either in his face or his dick, and if his brother wasn't a hundred feet away, he'd probably act on his fantasies and plant a kiss on Cas's chapped, swoon-worthy lips right then and there. "I'd like that a lot, Cas." 

Cas smiled dreamily, reaching out to give Dean's hand a quick squeeze, and okay, maybe this wasn't a crush anymore, maybe this was something the started with an L and got a lot worse from there. Cas was straight-up beautiful, and not just in looks, though Dean certainly appreciated those, too. Cas was funny, and sweet, and loyal, and he tried, he tried harder than anyone Dean had ever met. He was a fighter, a survivor, a warrior, and while he found those traits cockroach-like in himself, in Cas they were graceful, they were admirable, they were stunning. Dean looked over to his brother to find him waiting by the Impala, pointedly not looking at him and Cas, giving them some privacy. He walked over to Sam, that scared seed of doubt settling in his stomach. He kept his face neutral and told himself that his brother didn't suspect a thing, how could he, he was doing such a good job of keeping his loud, embarrassing feelings tucked away safely within himself. 

"Cas thinks that maybe one of the vampires turned someone. It's probably nothing, but we're gonna check it out anyway, just to be safe. You can head back to the room if you want. Sorry for dragging your ass out of bed." 

Sam internalized the joyous smile that badly wanted to stretch across his face. Dean did it, he actually did it, he was going to go on a DATE, of all things. He was so proud of his brother in that moment that he had to fake a yawn, lest his expression melt into anything that Dean would characterize as _mushy_. "Good thinking. I'm exhausted, so sorry if I don't wait up. Call me if you guys run into anything."

Relief buried the self-consciousness in his gut. "Will do. 'Night, Sammy."

"Night, Dean."

They parted ways.

**Author's Note:**

> I initially uploaded this laaaaaaate one night, like, real late, so I've had to make lots of tweaks and adjustments. Hopefully, it's better now. Also, i/r/t the Novaks in this fic, I'm imagining a "Shameless"-like scenario, with Naomi as Fiona — the big sister who has to take care of her big, crazy family after the parents bail. "Shameless" is a actually a great platform for the Novaks, since I can easily imagine war-decimated Heaven as the Gallagher house, full of lost people who desperately need help doing their best to help each other. 
> 
> Actually, Gabriel has a lot in common with Lip — extremely capable and possesses enormous potential, yet refuses to step up to the plate, only getting there after being pushed.
> 
> Maybe a more expansive fic incorporating this idea is in the works? Who knows.


End file.
